How can investors build portfolios capable of withstanding a changing market regime? At the Geneva Wealth Day, held on September 17, 2026, at Westhive in Geneva, the panel “Designing resilient portfolios: liquidity, risk and long-term allocation” explored how asset allocation, access to capital and family governance shape the ability to stay invested through uncertainty.
Moderated by Adela Baho of Vault AM, the discussion brought together Mikaël Safrana, Chief Investment Officer at Capital Y; Julien Etaix, Chief Investment Officer at NOVUM Partners; Richard Pandevant, Co-PM Long-Only Equity Funds & Head of Sustainable Investment at Exane Asset Management; and Max Dawe, ETF Strategist at Fidelity International. Their perspectives connected portfolio construction with the practical realities of managing family wealth.
Rethinking the protective role of fixed income
For Mikaël Safrana, the most significant allocation shift of recent years has been driven by a reassessment of the investment regime. A more fragmented world, supply disruptions and geopolitical tensions have informed Capital Y’s expectation of persistently higher inflation—and challenged the assumption that bonds will reliably offset equity losses.
“We were probably not getting paid enough for the volatility that we would be incurring.”
Mikaël Safrana, Capital Y
Capital Y has consequently reduced duration, favouring high-quality, shorter-duration instruments offering credit spreads. The objective is to accumulate carry over time, building a cushion through income rather than relying primarily on a bond rally when equity markets fall.
Yet recognising a change in regime does not lead every allocator to the same positioning.
Julien Etaix presented a different approach: NOVUM Partners retains meaningful duration within a smaller fixed-income allocation, valuing both its standalone return potential and its capacity to benefit from an economic slowdown. During the discussion, he cited duration of approximately 5.2 years in dollars and 4.7 years in euros, illustrating a deliberate willingness to retain interest-rate exposure.
The distinction is revealing. The debate was less about abandoning bonds than about defining precisely what they are expected to contribute: income, recession protection or the funding of long-term liabilities. A familiar allocation ratio is no substitute for understanding that function.
Active management: paying for judgement where it matters
The same scrutiny applies to manager selection. Rather than opposing active and passive investing in principle, the panel examined where investment discretion can justify its cost.
For Safrana, market efficiency is only part of the assessment. Index construction also matters, particularly in credit, where weighting issuers by the amount of debt outstanding may not produce the exposure an allocator actually wants. Capital Y’s fixed-income exposure is entirely actively managed, reflecting an emphasis on identifying the securities to avoid.
Richard Pandevant approached the question through company analysis. For Exane Asset Management, sector expertise supports an investment process centred on understanding businesses and avoiding excessive purchase prices.
“The main risk for an investor has always been and will always be to overpay.”
Richard Pandevant, Exane Asset Management
His argument also challenged the appearance of diversification. Combining global, US, technology and thematic exposures can repeatedly introduce the same large holdings into a portfolio. Owning several indices does not necessarily mean owning distinct sources of risk.
Pandevant nevertheless acknowledged that fundamental conviction requires humility. Market flows and positioning can dominate prices in the short term; understanding a company does not remove the need to manage portfolio exposures carefully.
Max Dawe added that the available toolkit is expanding. Active ETFs, low-tracking-error approaches and strategies designed around income or downside management offer additional ways to implement allocation decisions. Their relevance depends on the portfolio objective they serve.
Liquidity must be assessed beneath the wrapper
The discussion’s clearest point of convergence concerned liquidity: an investment vehicle cannot make its underlying assets inherently more liquid.
Dawe emphasised the need to distinguish between the ease of trading a product and the liquidity of the assets it holds. ETF structures can facilitate access and trading, but evaluating their behaviour under stress still requires an understanding of the underlying market.
“It doesn’t suddenly create liquidity for an asset.”
Max Dawe, Fidelity International, on the ETF structure
For private markets, that distinction has direct consequences. Etaix described a preference for closed-end funds, seeking to align the investment structure with the holding period of the underlying assets. He expressed caution towards evergreen structures where their liquidity features might sit uneasily with a family’s expectations or the assets being financed.
Secondary markets also received a measured assessment. They can provide an exit, but neither Dawe nor Safrana regarded them as a dependable substitute for planning to hold an investment over the long term.
Drawing on a client portfolio restructuring, Safrana highlighted the practical obstacles: transaction size, asset quality and access to the right buyers all influence whether an exit can be achieved at an acceptable price.
The implication for allocators is concrete: liquidity planning must distinguish between contractual redemption terms, market-dependent exit opportunities and capital that can genuinely remain committed.
Family governance: the foundation of staying invested
For Julien Etaix, portfolio resilience begins before asset allocation. It starts with agreement among family members on objectives, acceptable illiquidity and the circumstances in which capital may be needed.
“Resiliency, in our opinion, starts by governance and illiquidity management.”
Julien Etaix, NOVUM Partners
Julien Etaix also highlighted the psychological dimension of liquidity risk: illiquidity can create greater distress than volatility. A family may accept fluctuations in valuation yet struggle when money is unavailable for a distribution, an unexpected personal event or support for an operating business.
Understanding investments is equally important. Without a clear grasp of why a position is held, families may abandon it during a downturn—or exit as soon as losses have been recovered, before the longer-term investment thesis has played out.
Liquidity preparation therefore extends beyond cash balances. For the very large families NOVUM Partners serves, Etaix described committed credit facilities negotiated in favourable conditions, supplementing conventional Lombard lending as an additional source of funding when substantial needs arise.
Safrana also cautioned against holding sizeable cash positions in anticipation of the perfect re-entry point. His preference is to adjust equity risk through diversification and beta while remaining invested, rather than relying on market timing.
Asked what family offices should review over the next twelve months, Etaix returned to governance: a family-level investment policy statement, supported across generations, should establish the framework within which individual mandates operate.
Across the discussion, resilience emerged as a matter of coherence: between assets and liabilities, conviction and understanding, investment horizons and access to capital. In the more volatile regime described by the speakers, the decisive question is whether a family has both the financial capacity and the shared discipline to remain invested when its strategy is tested.
